Page 1 of If I Loved You Less
ChapterOne
Handsome, clever, and rich, Humaira Mirza lived nearly twenty-three years with very little to vex or distress her?—
Yet, a pout is plastered on my face.
I am surrounded with the general splendor of a beautiful walima: glittering chandeliers, melodic Urdu music, candles and fresh flowers, laughing guests dressed in smart suits and shining shalwar kameez.
The stage is decorated with white gardenia and pale pink hydrangea flowers, along with hanging lights and greenery. At the center of the stage, on an ornate and plush sofa, sits my Phuppo: radiant and beautiful as ever – and the reason for my sour mood.
When Mama passed away, Faiza Phuppo, youngest sister of one Mahmud Mirza, my father, moved in with us. She was twenty-seven at the time and not yet married – a sort of self-declared spinster – and she came to the rescue, even though I was thirteen and my older sister Naadia was fifteen, and thus we didn’t exactlyneedsomeone to take care of us. We had cleaning ladies, and Papa always said we could hire a cook, but Phuppo wouldn’t hear it, and I was secretly glad.
Naadia didn’t care for the attention – goodness, she was a moody teenager – but Papa says I was more of a delicate sort and needed the extra consideration. Who was I to deny my concerned father?
In the decade since then, Phuppo became my closest confidant and dear friend, and now here she is, being married off! Leaving me, to live her happily ever after! Just like Naadia did the year before. From a technical perspective, you can say it was all my fault, since I was the one to set both of them up with their (now) husbands, but who has time to be technical?
I am too busy pouting and generally feeling sorry for myself. I flit my gaze over to Naadia, hoping for some sisterly support, but she’s busy chatting with her best friend, Sadaf Chaudry, who’s here with her sister Haya, and her best friend, Zahra Paracha, all friends of mine and Naadia’s.
I don’t feel like going over and socializing because I’m preoccupied with quietly sulking. (It really requires a lot from me.) Besides, they are discussing Haya’s engagement and impending nuptials this spring, and I am only slightly bitter that someone younger than me has found love.
So I stand on the side, looking devastatingly beautiful in a baby pink open-front gown and lehenga that I got designed by Elan in Lahore. It’s a very classic walima look, with Swarovski crystals set into hand-sewn embroidery, and weighs about fifteen pounds.
I’m wearing Mama’s diamond set, too, the one Papa got her for their tenth anniversary, but you can’t tell because it’s hidden beneath my hijab. At least you can see the teeka, glistening on my forehead, and a bit of the necklace, peeking out from under my scarf.
Sipping my pina colada (virgin, obviously), I look around, trying not to let my sour mood show. From the outside, I’m sure no one can tell. I stand poised, my chin lifted. My round black eyes are lined with kajal, my cheeks rosy and my cheekbones highlighted.
The wedding was all fun and games until today. I got new outfits made (Zara Shahjahan for the dua, Nomi Ansari for the mehndi, Bunto Kazmi for the rukhsati, all stunning and classic, of course). Phuppo didn’t want to have so many events – she felt it was crude of her at the age of thirty-seven – but I told her I simply had to have the outfits made, and unless she wished to have me change every hour, she would oblige me for the functions.
And of course, she did. She always did.
Phuppo had never really believed in love – blasphemous, I know – but she had always waited for companionship, and now she was marrying someone just as reasonable and kind as she was.
Zeeshan Uncle is really sweet. He’s sitting up there on the stage now, a massive smile plastered on his dorky face. He’s bald and built like a boulder and even at forty-two, he’s handsome in a cool-uncle way. He’s been a long-time friend of the family and is a pediatrician.
He went through an awful divorce over a decade ago, when some girl from Pakistan only married him for his citizenship, then ran off with her boyfriend the first chance she got (these are the horror stories that keep Papa up at night). He had been a bachelor ever since, until one day I was chatting with him when it hit me – he and Phuppo would be perfect together!
I’ve been out of college a year and am frequently quite bored, despite my full-time job as a civil engineer, and am always looking for ways to be useful to the ones I love most, so I decided to throw them together, with subtle hints and little suggestions, and it took me some time, but finally he took the bait and proposed!
And the rest is history. Oh, I was so overjoyed. Still am. (Mostly).
But the novelty wore off last night, after the rukhsati, when Phuppo didn’t come home with us. It hit Papa pretty badly, too. We stood in the foyer of our dark house, staring at one another, as the realization dawned upon us that Phuppo was really gone.
Her room was empty, and would remain so.
“Don’t pout,” Naadia says, joining me. My sister is wearing Faraz Manan, part of the outfit she wore to her own walima last year. The champagne and silver getup looks stunning on her. “It’s unflattering.”
“No, it’s not,” I reply. I know perfectly well I have a nice set of lips, and with a well-placed pout, I can convince many people to do things for me. She raises her brows and sips her drink, a Shirley Temple.
“And you know it, too,” I say, pinching her side. She squeals, and I smile. “What did that loser in college used to say?”
“God, there were too many losers in college,” Naadia says. She widens her eyes, recollecting the days.
“My lips were ‘a cushion he wished to sink into,’” I continue with air quotes.
“Ew, ew, ew, still so gross,” Naadia says. She scrunches her face, and then we both gag. Then, at the same time, our discomfort at the memory fades into laughter.
Everything is always funny with my sister. It doesn’t matter how awful or weird or absurd it is, when I tell Naadia, we always have a laugh about it.
Our mannerisms are the only thing that give us away as sisters: otherwise we look nothing alike. Naadia is an inch taller (an inch and a half, as she likes to tell everyone) and thinner, with a dark complexion, and runway-model beauty: thick brows, massive eyes, small face. I’m shorter and more curvy, with a round face and more delicate features: a small nose, pouty lips, and arched brows on a face that never lost its childhood chubbiness.
